Headline August03, 2014

''' FAILING -O'MASTERS​! ''' : 

AND FAILING BY THIS CENTURY? '"

Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora,  have the same people, culture and geography.

Why is one rich and one so damn poor?

Why did the great people and students of Egypt filled Tahrir Square to bring down Hosni Mubarak and what does it mean for !WOW!'s understanding of the causes of survival, prosperity and poverty.

Thousands and thousands of you,  and others, keep posing this question.

So, !WOW!  will address the issue by researching and writing  ''regularly''  on this critical subject 

IN 1583  William Lee returned from his studies at the University of Cambridge to be come a local priest  in Calverton, England.

Elizabeth 1   -1558- 1603-  had recently issued a ruling that her people should always wear a knitted cap.

Lee recoded that  "knitters were the only means of producing such garments but it took so long to finish the article. I began to think. I watched my mother and my sisters sitting in the evening twilight plying their needles.

If garment were made by two needles and one line of thread, why not several needles to take up the thread."

This momentous thought was the beginning of the mechanization of textile production. Lee became obsessed with making a machine that would free people up from endless hand-knitting. 

He recalled , "my duties to Church and family I began to neglect. The idea of my machine and the creating of it ate into my heart and brain."

Finally, in 1589,  his  "stocking frame"  knitting machine was ready. He travelled to London with excitement to seek an interview with Elizabeth 1 to show her how useful the machine would be and to ask her for a patent that would stop other people from copying the design.

He rented a building to set up the machine up and, with the help of his local member of the Parliament Richard Parkyns, met Henry Carey, Lord Hundson, a member of the Queen's Privy Council.

Carey arranged for the Queen Elizabeth to come see the machine, but the reaction was devastating. She refused to grant Lee a patent, instead observing.

"Thou aimest big, Master Lee. Consider thou what the invention could do to my poor subjects. It would assuredly bring them ruin by depriving them of employment, thus making them beggars."

Crushed, Lee moved to France to try his luck there; when he failed there, too, he returned to England, where he asked James I,   1603-1625 , Elizabeth's successor, for a patent.

James I also refused. on the same grounds as Elizabeth. Both feared that mechanization of stocking production would be politically destabilizing. It would throw people out of work, create unemployment and political instability, and threaten royal power.

The stocking frame was an innovation that promised huge productivity increases, but it also promised creative destruction.

This historic happening, illustrates a key idea: The fear of creative destruction is the main reason there was no sustained increase in living standards between the Neolithic and Industrial revolutions.

Technological innovation makes human societies prosperous, but also involves the replacement of old with the new, and the destruction of the economic privileges and political power of certain people.

For sustained economic growth we need new technologies, new ways of doing things, and more often than not they come from newcomers  such as Lee. It may make society prosperous, but the process of creative destruction that it initiates threatens the livelihood of those who work with old technologies:

Such as the hand-knitters who would have found themselves unemployed by Lee's technology.

More important, major innovations such as Lee's stocking frame machine also threaten to reshape political power.

Ultimately it was not concern about the fate of those who might become unemployed as a result of Lee's machine that led Elizabeth 1 and James 1 to oppose his patent-

It was their fear that they would become political losers   -their concern that those displaced by the invention would create political instability and threaten their own paper.

As History knows, as was the case with the Luddites,  it is often possible to bypass the resistance of workers such as  hand-knitters.

But the elite, especially when their political power is threatened,  from a more formidable barrier to innovation.

The fact that they have much to lose from creative destruction means not only that they will not be the ones introducing new innovations but also that they will often resist  and try to stop such innovations.

Thus society need newcomers to introduce the most radical  innovations, and these newcomers and the creative destruction they wreak must often overcome several sources of resistance:

Including that from powerful rulers and elite.

With respectful and most caring dedication to all the poor Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

With prayers for Five humans of  ''very high class'',  now in their heavenly abodes: M Nawaz Khan, Zahoor Malik, M Arshad, Jamila Iqbal, Rubina Iqbal.

With respectful dedication to two personal friends, -scientist M Reza, Syed Salman Ahmed, and   Dr M Jawaid Khan, Imran Basit, Fahim Khan, Shami, Tanvir Iqbal Querishi,  Naveed Iqbal Querishi, Naeem Khan, Kaleem, Zafar Sami, Amin Malik, Naeem Malk, Hammad Khan, Imran Khan, Hashir Jan, Shahid Shakoor,

Sadat Perveen, Nasim Akhter, Shamim Akhter, Sajida Sultan, Sajida Akber, Uzma Naqvi, Shabana Rumi, Safia Nadeem,  Rabo, Dee, Farzana, Irum, Anila,  Zainab, Amina, Fatimah, Ayesha, Shazia, Shazia Gul, Haleema, Mariam, Saima, Aqsa, Zeba, Paras, Sorat, Shah Bano, Faryal, Alyia Ahmed, Alyia Rashid, Faryal Shahid   

''' Preamble '''

Good night and God bless!

SAM Daily Times - The Voice of the Voiceless